Blacks getting poorer, says Cape university study

Black households are getting poorer in post-apartheid South Africa, says a recent study by the University of the Western Cape.

According to the study, entitled "Staying Poor in South Africa", more than a quarter of all households remain trapped in long-term poverty.

"Since the end of apartheid in 1994, the South African government has achieved political stability, improved social services and brought about steady national economic growth. At the same time, poverty and economic inequality along racial lines have increased," the study said.

"Incomes in black households fell by 19 percent between 1995 and 2000, while white incomes rose by 15 percent. Meanwhile, the poorest third of black households are falling into long-term destitution - even in urban centres," the report noted.

The university's Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), together with the Chronic Poverty Research Centre, has been studying chronic poverty in democratic South Africa by surveying households around Cape Town.

They found that 70 percent of households in black townships did not have enough food during the previous year. The townships are a legacy of apartheid segregationist town planning, as blacks were forced to live on the outskirts of towns and cities which were reserved for whites.

"In South Africa, access to paid employment is the most important factor in the poverty status of households. This is partly because colonial land-grabbing and apartheid destroyed productive rural economies in order to create a cheap [black] labour force."

However, the report notes that over the past decade "employers have chosen capital-[intensive] rather than labour-intensive routes to competitiveness through increased mechanisation".

As a result, "up to a million formal-sector jobs were lost" and unemployment had doubled in 10 years to over 30 percent.

In Cape townships researchers found that: 76 percent of households lived below the poverty line (R352 or US $42 per adult per month) – an increase of 15 percent since 1996; almost a third of households reported that the main breadwinner had lost a job in the previous year; 52 percent of households had no income from wages; and 67 percent of wage earners remained below the poverty line.

An individual's ability to find paid work was not greatly influenced by their level of education.

According to the report, the main causes of death in black townships were avoidable effects of poverty: communicable diseases such as HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis accounted for 39 percent; and trauma such as assaults accounted for 29 percent of deaths.

The study found "the most important obstacle to escaping from poverty was the lack of access to basic economic resources like land".

Prices of staples such as maize were "now set on world markets, [which meant] poor households are directly affected by international currency changes and global trade liberalisation".

"Households have to pay for basic social goods, including transport. This increases their vulnerability and the risk of becoming trapped in debt," the report added.

Similar concerns were expressed by the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) in April. The South African government angrily rejected the SAHRC's fourth annual economic and social rights report, which suggested it was failing the poor.

The SAHRC had pointed to serious shortcomings in government's tackling of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, housing backlogs, lack of access to social security grants and the slow pace of land reform.